Mothers of Plaza de Mayo
movement of Argentine mothers who campaigned for their children who had been "disappeared"
The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (Spanish: Madres de Plaza de Mayo) is an Argentine human rights association formed in response to abuses by the National Reorganization Process, the military dictatorship by Jorge Rafael Videla. Initially the association worked to find the desaparecidos, people who had disappeared without arrests, trials or judicial process; most were believed dead. Their mothers and supporters investigated to determine the culprits of what were considered crimes against humanity in order to bring them to trial and sentencing.
The Mothers began demonstrating in the Plaza de Mayo, the public square located in front of the Casa Rosada presidential palace, in the city of Buenos Aires, on 30 April 1977. They petitioned to have their disappeared children, mostly young adults, returned alive. The women demonstrated in the square on a daily basis and held signs with their pleas, followed by carrying photos of their missing children, and wearing white scarves with their names. By declaring a state of emergency, police expelled them from the public square.
In September 1977, in order to make a larger opportunity to share their stories with other Argentinians, the mothers decided to join the annual pilgrimage to Our Lady of Luján, located 30 miles (48 km) outside Buenos Aires. To stand out among the crowds, the mothers wore children's nappies (diapers) as headscarves. Following the pilgrimage, the mothers decided to continue wearing these headscarves during their meetings and weekly demonstrations at the Plaza.
“Mothers of Plaza de Mayo” enters the record as movement of Argentine mothers who campaigned for their children who had been "disappeared". Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mothers, Plaza and Mayo can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Mothers of Plaza de Mayo” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mothers, Plaza and Mayo provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q727121. VIAF identifies the subject as 148619550. The Library of Congress control number is n85080805. 4 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1977.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Mothers of Plaza de Mayo”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Mothers of Plaza de Mayo primary sources, Mothers of Plaza de Mayo archive and Mothers research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Mothers of Plaza de Mayo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.